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VivanLeburgRothstein

Vivian Leburg Rothstein’s early experiences fighting for civil rights led her to a long career advocating for peace, women’s rights, and the labor movement. Rothstein demonstrated with CORE in 1963 and travelled to Mississippi in 1965 to participate in demonstrations, voter registration, and school integration. She went on to do community organizing with Students for a Democratic Society and work with Southern Appalachian whites. On a peace delegation to North Vietnam in 1967, she met with the Vietnamese Women’s Union and was inspired to help found Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in 1969, focusing her efforts on organizing working class women. She then worked with the American Friends Service Committee on its Middle East Peace Education Program and spent ten years running a nonprofit agency that provided shelters and services to homeless adults and families as well as battered women and their children in Santa Monica, California. As of 2014, she directs organizing efforts by the Hotel Workers International Union in Los Angeles for a living wage and benefits, and she is collaborating with several friends on a book about their experiences in the women’s movement.

Vivan Rothstein with Stella and Carien Wilder in Leake County, Mississippi, where Vivian visited them during the 1994 Freedom Summer Project 30th Anniversary Reunion. Stella housed Vivian in 1965 when she was a civil rights worker. Courtesy of Vivan Rothstein.